Brent and Lynn

Tuesday, Aug 28

Awoke early and went back to Southampton so I could show Lynn around my old

mission stomping grounds.

Found the apartment where I lived on Darwin Road.
I am not pointing up just for the exercise, I actually lived on the second floor.
Had to pay for the electricity a schilling at a time in a coin op thing.
This is where I had an English companion that would not go out to work.  David Hutton came with me tracting when he finished his postal job for the day.  Yes, probably was not a good idea to leave my companion in the apartment alone.  It was a lonely time for me. 

This is the same post box where I used to mail letters. Not telling to who. Don't want to get Lynn jealous. (yeah, right)

We also walked through the memorable "Common,"

which is a large and lovely park I used to walk through 

and where I also played soccer on P-days.  
Lynn loved the trees. 
 See if you can see me in the tree.

Can't see me? Probably because I am not there. :)

The park is quite large and so pretty, but not as pretty as the Temple grounds,
 which you will see later.

Please notice that all the paths are paved.  It rains so much that if the paths were not paved they would be a muddy mess, making them unusable.

We stopped at the famous Bargate in Southampton before heading toward the coast.

 





It started to rain as we left Southampton.
It's been the wettest year on record for England, and the countryside showed it.

Notice how, instead of weeds alongside the road, they have bushes or trees.

The 500 year old B&B , Southern Cross, made of cob and sod 
where we stayed Tuesday night in Sidmouth.

Andrew, the owner, was very friendly and didn't run our credit card that night when we arrived.  He told us of a place up the road, an Italian restaurant, that served gluten free food.  We went there to eat and when we finished our yummy Spaghetti Bolognese we gave them our credit card and it wouldn't work.  It had worked previously so we had them try it again, but to no avail.  Several of the places we had been accepted American Express, but not this place.  Luckily, we had literally just enough cash to pay for the meal and a tip.  We went back to the B&B and told them we were having trouble with our credit card and would they please run it so we could see if it was going to work.  It wouldn't.  They were so nice that they trusted us to call Visa, and then our credit union (Visa said they couldn't help us because our credit union serviced their own cards).  Another of God's tender mercies--the credit union was open and resolved the issue within minutes.  
What a blessing we discovered it that night and not the next morning when we went to pay.  
The credit union would have been closed!